Fremantle Doctor visits

After a day of crash-and-burn sailing on the Swan River, New Zealander Simon Minoprio is clinging to a one point lead over Sydney's Michael Dunstan, in the Warren Jones Youth Regatta.

Perth's legendary seabreeze, the Fremantle Doctor, decided it was a kill or cure sort of a day, and the shore crews will have a busy night repairing the boats for Thursday's final day of racing.

Michael Dunstan's bowman, Charlie Dwyer from Ireland, said "being on the bow of those boats today was like trying to stand on a beach ball."

Both Dunstan and Minoprio went through the third day of this match racing regatta undefeated, and it seems that this trans-Tasmanian tussle will come down to the meeting of these rivals in their second to last match of the series.

Simon Minoprio's toughest race of the day was against fellow Kiwi Laurie Jury, who has slipped to third place after heading the leaderboard at the end of the first day. The scoring is also tightening up in the battle for third place, with Laurie Jury on twelve points, while Sweden's Emil Wiberg and local skipper Keith Swinton are right behind him on eleven points. Though the loss to Minoprio was Jury's only defeat of the day, it now seems unlikely that he can make a significant challenge for first place in this event.

The seabreeze established itself early in the morning, and built throughout the day, until by mid afternoon the boats were sailing with small jibs and reefed mainsails in 25 to 30 knots of breeze. At the end of the day one boat was out of action following a collision between Royal Perth Yacth Club's Jackson Digney and Fremantle Sailing Club's Torvar Mirsky.

While the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club race management team did a great job of keeping the regatta on schedule, the young crews found the flighty Foundation 36 yachts were a handful in the windy conditions.

The winner of the event gets automatic entry into the German Match Racing regatta later in the year, plus and airfares and expenses package.